Prosecutors fear that Lee may flee

ALBUQUERQUE {AP} Attorneys for a fired Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who is accused of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets are trying to get him released from jail.

The attorneys want a U.S. District Court judge in Albuquerque to revoke U.S. Magistrate Don Svet's order detaining Wen Ho Lee without bond.

Lee is being held in the Santa Fe County jail.

Lee, 59, was arrested Dec. 10 and is accused of illegally downloading secret data from computers at the lab. He pleaded innocent.

Lee acknowledged transferring "legacy codes" that provide a history of nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer system to his less-secure personal office computer.

Lee said he was creating a backup in case of a computer crash.

Lee, born in Taiwan, was the focus of a lengthy probe into whether nuclear secrets were leaked to China, but the U.S. government has not charged him with spying.

Prosecutors contend Lee is a flight risk. Lee's attorneys, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles and John Cline of Albuquerque, disagree.

Lee sits in a jail cell 23 hours a day and is not allowed to call anyone but his attorneys on the telephone.

Only his immediate family and his attorneys can visit him.

When Lee's family visits, an FBI agent listens in on the conversations and forbids them from speaking Chinese to each other.

"Such extraordinary restrictions more severe than prisoners convicted of crimes must endure might conceivably be justified if the government could produce credible evidence that Dr. Lee had passed nuclear secrets to an unauthorized person, or had intended to do so, or that he intended to harm the United States or aid a foreign country," Lee's attorneys said in a motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court.

"But the government produced no such evidence at (Monday's) detention hearing, and none exists," the motion says.

A pretrial services officer recommended Lee be released on $100,000 bond and electronic monitoring, the motion says.

Lee's attorneys also propose that Lee's neighbor of 20 years, Jean Marshall, take third-party custody of Lee.